Sprecher
Beschreibung
The size of cells ranges from 0.1 to 100 μm, regardless of the type of living cells. We have approached the physicochemical meaning using μm-sized polymer droplets covered with a lipid layer as artificial cells. From the molecular analysis inside the artificial cells, we have found that the properties and phase transitions of polymers confined to the artificial cell often differ from those in bulk systems. The effect that causes this difference is referred to as the cell size space effect (CSE) [1, 2]. In this talk, I will present two examples of CSEs. In the case of molecular diffusion in one-component polymer solutions, polymer diffusion is slower than diffusion within larger cells when the artificial cell size is smaller than ~100 μm. In the case of two-component polymer solutions, phase separation is induced within the cell size space even under conditions that maintain a uniform phase in bulk. These CSE-induced alternations are somewhat unexpected given that the spatial size scale of cells is more than two orders of magnitude larger than that of molecules. We have qualitatively explained these phenomena by considering the length-dependent membrane wettability of polymers. Based on these results, we will discuss the role of cell size space in regulating molecular behavior.
References:
1. Watanabe, et al., ACS Material. Lett., 2022, 4:17422.
2. Yanagisawa, et al., Langmuir, 2022, 38:11811
